News

'Vette science

Joshua Dowling, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 25, 2007

The Chevrolet Corvette, Detroit's answer to the Porsche 911, has arrived in Australia. JOSHUA DOWLING drives the sports car known as the heartbeat of America.

ChevroletCorvetteZ06

Claimed 0 to 100kmh Less than 4 seconds. A small business in a small town in Queensland has managed to do what the biggest car maker on the planet, General Motors, cannot: build a right-hand-drive version of the iconic Chevrolet Corvette, one of the automotive world's most famous nameplates.

And this isn't just any Corvette, it's the high-powered Z06 version bred for endurance sports car racing. It's the fastest and most powerful car General Motors has built. It's so quick it even has a digital G-force meter to measure lateral forces in tight corners.

In the United States it sells for a fraction of the cost of European thoroughbreds such as Porsche and Ferrari and yet it is quicker than its more exotic peers.

Why is it so? Part of the answer is the thumping, handbuilt 7.0-litre V8 engine which has 377kW of power and 644Nm of torque. This in a car that is about 400kg, or 20 per cent, lighter than a new Holden Commodore.

Its claimed straight-line speed is "less than 4 seconds" for the 0 to 100kmh sprint and less than 12 seconds for the 400-metre dash, the age-old drag racing benchmark. These figures are significantly quicker than mainstream Porsche and Ferrari models. To find a car with the performance to match or better this, you need to spend more than $400,000 with the Germans or the Italians.

That said, in Australia, this Corvette doesn't come cheap. In the US it sells for $75,000 but here it costs $240,000 once the Federal Government gets its share of import duty, luxury car tax and GST. Also included in the price is the cost of the conversion (a three-week exercise) and the cost of getting the car to meet local compliance regulations.

The Gympie company that distributes the Z06, Corvette Queensland (which also sells about 100 Hummers and 200 Chevrolet pick-ups a year), reckons it will sell just a dozen or so of the flagship Corvettes each year but it can import twice that number if there is demand - which there is. Three cars have already been sold this year.

A Volvo-driving doctor from South Australia, Zac Baran, 43, was the first person in Australia to own a Z06. He took delivery of his red Corvette in late December and has barely driven it, with just 500 kilometres under its tyres in a month. That's partly because, in addition to his Volvo daily driver, he has five other Corvettes from which to choose.

He bought the Corvette Z06 without even taking it for a test drive. "It's exceeded my expectations," he says. "It's just such an amazing car."